Global POV: At the Intersection of Technology and Culture

A holiday wish for Tivo

Tivo sucks.

I used to love Tivo. I use one constantly, but the company has pissed me off more than once over the years and it keeps coming back to the same problem--they don't know what business they're in.

This is a fatal error, as legendary for taking down consumer tech companies as Russia is at stopping European hegemonial expansion.

Tivo is in the time-shifting, time-saving business, enabling customers to watch television shows when it's convenient for them to do so and expending a minimum amount of time in the process. Customers will and do pay Tivo for this service.

Tivo thinks that they're in the advertising facilitation business. Rather than treating a loyal customer base as the longterm bucolic livestock that we are, rewarding the company with eggs and milk; they are slaughtering us as soon as we're warm, serving up our jerking carcasses to advertisers.

The case in point that brought this to mind is a new announcement from Tivo that when a user deletes a show, they will be presented with a choice to watch an advertiser's commercial, completely unrelated to the content that they're expunging. Well, that makes sense--clearly when the user is busily deleting shows,they're really begging to watch more commercials.

We. Don't. Want. To. Watch. Commercials...That's why we bought the Tivo in the first place.

As we begin the holiday season, my fervent wish this year is for Tivo to sicken and die, their consumer-unfriendly policies creating service-oriented competitors that will hound the predatory company, kill it and pick the company's carcass clean, leaving the whitening bones in Silicon Valley as a reminder that what creates can kill and consumers are not dogs, blindly loyal even after being kicked.

Posted on November 29, 2006

Advertising

Clean squeaky teeth

I just got back from the Dentist's office and had my teeth cleaned. This is horribly picky, I suppose, but I absolutely HATE the way hygenists get you in the chair, fill your mouth with equipment and then tell you their life's story.

You can't get up. You can't interrupt. You have to lie back while they poke and prod you ("I'm sorry, did that hurt?") and tell you about their cousin's cancer or their boyfriend or their political opinions.

It's one of life's annoyances, like television commercials, except hygenists have no off button.

Posted on November 22, 2006

Bitches

If anyone questions whether the post-9-11 terrorist fear has been used as an excuse to spy on domestics, I refer them to the New York Times today, which features another entry in the long-running Talon saga. Talon is a secret program that the Defense Department has used to collect information on Americans who protest the war, usually on college campuses. Information on the program has recently come to light via use of the Freedom of Information Act.

To be fair, the DoD officials quoted in the article are rejecting the need to keep anti-war information and vowing to purge it, but I wonder. I often write about the defining principle of the Digital Age, which is that "data never disappears." Who wants to bet that this innuendo and slurring of students exercising their First Amendment rights won't show up again, someday in the future, when they least expect it. After all, as George Bush said, "There ought to be limits to Freedom."

Posted on November 21, 2006

Privacy

No one can hear you scream in namespace

An article in the NY Times talks about a specific instance of the problem of domain name squatting--political name speculation. The reporter points out that almost every conceivable pairing of candidates' names postpended with an '08 are gone. ObamaClinton08.com for instance.

Hollywood has dealt with this issue for a decade. Check out the clever use of names for new movies. Sony has given up and sticks the sites two or even three levels down such as: http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/casinoroyale/site/. Some change the name as from "borat" to "boratmovie.com". Politicians could easily do the same thing.

I was the CTO of Network Solutions during the late 90s and we had this problem even then. It stems from an artificial scarcity situation stemming from the ubiquitious usage of the dot com top level domain. Even though other TLDs are now available, the dot coms are the premium space and politicians like movies, want to be there.

I'm not sure what the solution is to this naming problem, but someone other than ICANN (the domain name czar organization) needs to solve it. It's time for a clever startup to find a different way to do directory lookups on the Internet and in the process, make a lot of money.

Posted on November 20, 2006

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The killer speaks

OJ Simpson is going on Fox News later this month to do a two-part interview where he will speculate on how he hypothetically might have killed his wife and Ron Goldman, although he says he didn't. The interview is timed with the release of his new book, "If I did it...". I would guess that the book is about the obvious.

It's been 12 years since the sensational killing, the Bronco chase, Kato Kaelin and the trial of the century. OJ was acquitted, although he was convicted later in a civil suit for the killings and ordered to pay $33.5 million --which he has not yet done. In the interim, OJ has played golf around the world and hosted the incredibly tasteless show "Juiced", similar to Ashton Kutcher's "Punk'd", where OJ confronts people around the country in odd circumstances, scaring the bejeezus out of them because, well, he's OJ. In one particularly notorious episode, he tries to sell a White Bronco on a car lot, touting its escapability.

Fox has finally crossed the line with this OJ interview. It's disgraceful that this man is all but a self-confessed killer of two and continues to make money from it. Reality programming aside, this is an all-time low, even for Fox, who would probably air expose specials on the day of Armageddon, even as their skin started to burn.

The legal system has spoken. OJ is not guilty of criminal charges. But we all know better, don't we? Culturally we should not allow him to make another penny from the notoriety that he gained as a killer. Watching the Fox special would be like watching Jeffrey Dahmer competing on the Iron Chef.

Posted on November 16, 2006

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Media

Lindsay Lohan and abuse in Kuala Lumpur

The Washington Post has a story about a young Malaysian woman who was arrested on suspicion of drug possession by Kuala Lumpur police and ordered to strip naked and repeatedly squat. Supposedly this happens a lot in Kuala Lumpur. The newsworthy piece is that this particular piece of abuse and humiliation was captured by a policeman on his cellphone and made its way to the Internet, sparking international outrage.

Even though the article has a trend-setting, global headline, "Amateur Videos are Putting Official Abuse in New Light", the writer slants the piece heavily towards the foreign and vaguely unAmerican land of Malaysia, even putting a sidebar on cellphone usage in that country. The spin leaves one with the feeling that this is somehow a local phenomena, useful in the 3rd world.

Well, it might prove pretty damn useful in the 1st and 2nd ones, too. Video is the silent witness to abuse and tragedy everywhere. Remember Rodney King? I can't imagine that too many public events in the future will not be recorded for posterity.

And not just the big things, but also the little picayune peculiar ones. Last week, professional 20-year old exhibitionist Linday Lohan, called her gynecologist's test dummy friend, Paris Hilton a four letter word (hint, it starts with 'C'). She mumbled the word while getting into a car, apparently unaware that the words were snagged.

Video accountability in the real world is the future. That's why Youtube is potentially so important. Well-known people will, as they well know, be under perpetual scrutiny. Abusive situations will be documented. Innocent people will be embarassed and those of us who are still cringing at the Starr report's description of the 1001'st use of a cigar will spend the future mortified, hanging our heads and peeping between our fingers at the next outrageous sight.

Posted on November 15, 2006

Technology

Gold in virtual hills

Yahoo CEO Terry Semel says that the potential for advertising on the Internet has been underestimated. According to Semel, previous industry estimates do not take into account video, social media or mobile devices.

Most projections show $16 billion being spent next year in Internet advertising.

I actually think that it's much higher because of the potential for advertising using product placement in video games and virtual worlds like Second Life as well as commericals as quid pro quo for collaborative websites. Since it's become pretty clear that startup companies cannot charge customers for social networking business models, the way to go is through advertising and most consumers appear willing to put up with it.

As some of the dubious profiling technology developed for Homeland Security is repurposed to provide laser-like targeted ads, consumers will eventually come to like a certain kind of respectful, opt-in, customized ad which can be delivered so much easier on the 'Net than elsewhere.

The actual number for ad revenue by the end of the decade could be many times projections.

Posted on November 14, 2006

Advertising

The compass of cyberspace

I resisted using Instant Messenger-like programs for a long time. I din't think that I wanted people to be able to get at me night-and-day and I wasn't sure that there was anyone out there that I needed to talk to faster than email and slower than cell phone. Am I so jaded that I needed this kind of interactive email?

But finally I broke down last year and started using AIM and immediately realized something interesting--IM gives you presence detection. Knowing my friends and family enough to have a general idea of what they're up to means that when I see them pop up in IM, I know where they are--roughly.

This idea is being underutilized right now. There's enormous benefit in having people in a trusted group knowledgable about where you and what you're up to. I thought this decades ago when I first started using vacation messages on email.

I envision this concept of presence detection expanded throughout the Internet and maybe even tied in to mobile devices. I'm not sure that we all want to be GPS located most of the time (I don't), but it's to our advantage for those close to us to know what we're doing.

Posted on November 13, 2006

Technology

Second sight--Second Life

I have seen the future and it is Second Life. IBM has decided to invest $10 million in using the virtual world. They have already been using it for meetings, so the added money isn't a great surprise. CEO Sam Palmisano will be addressing employees next week in a virtual meeting staged on a Second Life island.

Why is this significant? Because I believe that there will be a huge migration of conventional collaborative Internet functions into these virtual worlds over the next five years. I predict that most social websites, including most of the newer ones like Youtube, Myspace and Facebook will either migrate into these worlds or die.

Expect a convergence of the online gaming world and virtual worlds.

The only thing that's missing (now that Broadband is cheap and plentiful) is a monster identity management system that cuts across each of the sites.

Posted on November 10, 2006

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Technology

Travel to America and score

Foreign travelers beware. The Department of Homeland Security published a notice in the Federal Register last week announcing the creation of a new monitoring program called the Automated Targeting System (ATS). The ATS is a nationwide, risk-assessment system that targets every single person, vehicle or piece of cargo entering or leaving the United States, examines their behavior and assigns them a "threat score", based on some kind of unknown analysis and then flags the traveler's record for human inteception. The program is explicitly exempted from the Privacy Act, making it impossible for a citizen to know that they're in the database or request changes, if they somehow find out that incorrect information about them exists in the system.

Actually I'm not sure that I mind this program so much. It depends on what kind of information that they pull in for analysis and I suppose, what rules they create for upping a terrorist score. Without this kind of profiling system, I'm not sure how the government would spot a bomb in cargo or a certain kind of malicious passenger. Even though the system may be justifiable however, the typical lack of oversight and inattention to privacy (they say that they'll keep the data for 40 years, for instance), is problematic, because even if it seems reasonable on the surface, this kind of system can be misued and quickly go out of control.

Posted on November 09, 2006

Privacy

One man, one vote

Whew, the United States is waking up from a long, national nightmare. The Democrats have the House, the majority of the governors' seats and a very good chance at getting the Senate. I hope that they have the wisdom to steer the country onto a reasonable course, holding tight until we can get a President in 2008 who has the vision to lead the country into the future.

As we wait for the bitter recount in Virginia, I am grateful that I changed my travel plans this week. I needed to be out of state and didn't have enough time to arrange for an absentee ballot, putting me in a position where I would have been unable to vote yesterday. At first it didn't bother me. I had not voted before. But as I thought more about what had been happening to the country since Bush had gotten in and remembered the close loss of Al Gore in Florida, I changed my mind. I disappointed an old friend that I hadn't seen in a while and stayed in town one one more day, leaving at 6:30 in the morning, just so I could cast my ballot for Jim Webb.

We're now in a position where control of the Senate could come down to a single seat--Virginia, where Webb is winning by a scant few thousand votes. My vote could make a significant difference.

Posted on November 08, 2006

Robomania

The election is today. A good harbinger of technological things to come in the political world is the use of so-called robo-calling. Both parties are wildly dialing households in contested areas over and over in an attempt to influence today's election. The Republicans appear to be worse, often making it seem like it's a Democrat annoying the citizen by witholding the identification of the candidate until the end of the call.

Why can they do this in violation of the do-not-call registry? Because they exempted themselves (political fundraisers) from the restrictions.

Bastards.

Posted on November 07, 2006

Leadership from '06 to '08

Tomorrow is the big day for the Democrats. It's hard to believe that they won't get at least the House of Representatives with an outside chance of getting the Senate. The issue is not who runs the country, but what's the direction? The Republicans have legitimately criticized the Dems for running against Bush rather than having their own plan and there's something to be said for that argument.

The economy is in pretty good shape, but no one seems to have noticed. The Patriot Act is the law of the land and is the tip of an iceberg of troublesome legislation floating out there. We're still in Iraq and more US soldiers are dying and being maimed there every day. There doesn't seem to be a reasonable exit strategy. Iran is a problem as now is Korea.

If the Dems win, what will they do? I fear that they will be given enough rope to hang themselves. The two years between the elections is not enough to effect change (especially without a good vision), but long enough to be blamed for doing no better than their Republican forebears. We could end up with a Bush heir to the throne in '08, because of a Dem sweep tomorrow, followed by ineffective poltical management.

Posted on November 06, 2006